Wendy and Lucy Critic Reviews

Having the dog around raises the emotional stakes tenfold, and develops a kinship with Vittorio De Sica's Italian neo-realist classic "Umberto D.," which also revealed societal ills through a poignant dog-owner relationshipRead the full review

Wendy and Lucy is like "Lassie Come Home" directed by Antonioni. What's piercing about it, and also disturbing, is that Reichardt views the renunciation of society with something close to righteous purity -- as a lefty romantic dream.Read the full review

Williams' performance is remarkable not only for its depth but for its stillness.Read the full review

What will happen to her? The strength of this short, simple, perfect story of a young woman and her dog is that this does not seem, by the end, to be an idle or trivial question. What happens to Wendy -- and to Lucy -- matters a lot, which is to say that Wendy and Lucy, for all its modesty, matters a lot too.Read the full review

Another illustration of how absorbing a film can be when the plot doesn't stand between us and a character.Read the full review

An evocative film with a believable and subtly enthralling lead performance that gets deeply under your skin.Read the full review

Simple story, beautifully told.Read the full review

Wendy Carroll is a character we rarely see in movies anymore, a woman left alone with her thoughts. That a moviegoer would care what she's thinking testifies to the power in Williams's brand of solitude.Read the full review

"Old Joy" helmer Kelly Reichardt plays to her strengths in Wendy and Lucy, a modest yet deeply felt road movie about an idealistic young drifter, her faithful canine and the wide-open spaces of the Pacific Northwest.Read the full review